Laura Vivanco @lauravivanco@romancelandia.club

I've just put up the core of a book about faith, love and hope in romance. The intro does need a CW as it refers to the current situation but the "cover" image is pretty and created centuries ago so should be fine: https://www.vivanco.me.uk/node/428

It's on my website and comments are welcome. I'm basically arguing that romances can be defined as "novels whose authors have assumed pastoral roles, offering hope to their readers through works which propagate faith in the goodness and durability of love."

@VaVeros Also, while finding new material for my database, I came across an article with an interesting thought experiment about Readers' Advisory: https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-01-2020-0002
The reader in the example only wants to read historical romances with white protagonists. I think the author must be a librarian who's aware of what's going on in Romancelandia!

@VaVeros Something turned up in my Google Alerts which is in Greek and I've got no idea how to cite it because I can't even work out which bit is the author's name, which bit is the title etc. It's at http://hdl.handle.net/11610/19722 Can you help? It looks like a thesis, but I can't work out what kind or from which Greek university. I do get the impression it's about romance because there's a small English bit saying "Women and pink literature: the case of HARLEQUIN publications".

Even machine-embroidery is very time-consuming. This video speeds it up a bit, and I thought it was fun to watch so I wanted to share:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBjGiixFCxM

There's a fundraising effort to help half of the Kit Rocha duo, who needs surgery. Lots of authors have contributed to a book bundle, which is a great way to get some of the most talked-about recent romances (and some older ones) at an amazing price and also help Donna with her medical costs.

Bree's tweeted about it here: https://twitter.com/mostlybree/status/1202594080745754624

or you can go directly to the site here: https://payhip.com/b/wlOx

You'd need to be able to open a zip file + use the format the books are in.

@willaful We just watched Wreck-It Ralph and it was a hit from teen to parents!

Exciting weather here just now: lightning, thunder, torrential rain and even some hailstones.

@herhandsmyhands Do you remember you discovered one day that Meljean Brook was off the other site. Well, I've only just seen this explanation, from March: http://meljeanbrook.com/meljean-why-arent-you-on-twitter

I don't tend to believe the results of online tests, but I'm curious about how this works. It tries to assess your gender and I came out as 47% masculine and 36% feminine (not sure what the remaining 17% is, but I'm suspecting it's text because of how long I spend reading) 😃 https://www.idrlabs.com/gender/result.php?masculine=47&feminine=36
I'm wondering how many female people I know would actually come out as "feminine".

@mom Growly Cub is still having issues getting on here. It seems to have something to do with her email address: https://twitter.com/GrowlyCub/status/1127253874534961153 Any advice? Or settings that could be changed somewhere in the parts of the instance only you can see?

@VaVeros Hello! Good to see you here. Also, I've not tried starting a thread addressed to anyone in particular, so I'm going to test this on you and see if it works.

Sounds like most of us on here are stressed about one thing or another, what with the personal being political and vice versa. Group hug!

I read a paper this morning which makes me wonder how much the disdain for romance is based on disbelief about love.

I've got some quotes from the paper here: http://www.vivanco.me.uk/node/410